Ramayana: Part One opens with Rs 64.85 crore on day one, the biggest pre-Diwali opening in Hindi cinema
Nitesh Tiwari's Ramayana: Part One collected Rs 64.85 crore net in India on its opening day, the biggest pre-Diwali opening ever in Hindi cinema, though it fell short of Adipurush's mythological record.
Nitesh Tiwari's Ramayana: Part One has opened with Rs 64.85 crore net in India on its first day, according to trade tracker Sacnilk, making it the biggest pre-Diwali opening Hindi cinema has ever recorded. The film, which released in theatres worldwide on Thursday, 5 November, collected Rs 77.50 crore gross across the country on day one.
The opening lands the Ranbir Kapoor and Yash starrer straight into the record books. It is the second-biggest Hindi opener of 2026 so far, behind only Dhurandhar 2: The Revenge, which took Rs 102.55 crore net on its opening day. It has moved ahead of the day-one figures of Animal and Pathaan, and it has broken the long-standing pre-Diwali record held by Salman Khan's Tiger 3, which opened at Rs 44 crore on Diwali day.
The one record it did not take is the biggest mythological opening of all. Prabhas's Adipurush, released in 2023, still leads that chart with Rs 86.75 crore net and Rs 103.08 crore gross on its first day, leaving a gap of Rs 21.90 crore between the two films.
The Hindi version did almost all of the heavy lifting. It collected Rs 47.50 crore net from 20,678 shows, close to three-quarters of the film's total. Kannada followed with Rs 7.25 crore, Telugu with Rs 6 crore, Tamil with Rs 2.60 crore and Malayalam with Rs 1.50 crore. The film played across about 25,200 shows in five languages on its opening day, with overall occupancy of around 34 to 36 percent, the night shows running strongest at close to 49 percent.
The numbers are big, but they sit below what trade circles had expected. Projections through Thursday had put the film at Rs 90 crore to Rs 100 crore net for the day, built on advance bookings that crossed Rs 100 crore before release. Bollywood Hungama, which tracks the trade separately, put the day-one total slightly lower, at Rs 62.47 crore, with the Hindi version at Rs 45.46 crore.
That shortfall is not unusual for a film opening on a working Thursday. The modest occupancy figures have been attributed in part to the weekday release, and mythological and devotional dramas have a long history of growing on word of mouth rather than opening at their peak. The weekend, with family audiences and the festive mood ahead of Diwali, is where the film's fate will largely be decided.
The first signs for the weekend are encouraging. Advance bookings for the first Friday had already reached Rs 30.63 crore gross across 24,550 shows by 6:20am on Friday, and trade estimates put the four-day pre-Diwali weekend at around Rs 210 crore. Early estimates also place the worldwide opening day above Rs 150 crore.
Ramayana: Part One stars Ranbir Kapoor as Rama, Yash as Ravana and Sai Pallavi as Sita, and is produced by Namit Malhotra. It is the first instalment of a planned trilogy retelling the epic, and its scale, music and visual effects drew praise in the first reviews, even as audiences were divided on some of the storytelling choices.
The film's opening also underlines how much the Indian box office now depends on event releases. A single film taking close to Rs 65 crore net in a day, on a Thursday, would have been unthinkable a decade ago. Whether Ramayana can convert that start into a long run will depend on the next three days, and on whether the southern versions, which contributed far less than expected, begin to pick up as word spreads.
For now, the film has delivered the biggest pre-Diwali opening ever seen in Hindi cinema, and the industry will be watching the weekend figures closely to see how far it can go.
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